What weakness does Derrida identify in Saussure’s Description of Sign and Levi Strauss’s Discourse on myths?

This general transition from a belief in structures with centers to a belief in decentered structures has, according to Derrida, relevance in connection with what is generally called "human sciences".

To validate this argument, Derrida takes up the example of Saussure’s description of sign. In Saussure, the ‘metaphysics of presence’ is affirmed by his insistence on the fact that a sign has two components – the signifier and the signified, the signified which the mental and psychological. This would imply that the meaning of a sign is present to the speaker when he uses in, in defiance of the fact that meaning is constituted by a system of differences. That is also why Saussure insists on the primacy of speaking. As soon as language is written down, a distance between the subject and his words is created, causing meaning to become unanchored. Derrida however critiques this ‘phonocentrism’ and argues that the distance between the subject and his words exist in any case, even while speaking – that the meaning of sign is always unanchored. Sign has no innate or transcendental truth. Thus, the signified never has any immediate self-present meaning. It is itself only a sign that derives its meaning from other signs. Hence a signified can be a signifier and vice versa. Such a viewpoint entails that sign thus be stripped off its signified component. Meaning is never present at face-value; we cannot escape the process of interpretation. While Saussure still sees language as a closed system where every word has its place and consequently its meaning, Derrida wants to argue for language as an open system. In denying the metaphysics of presence the distances between inside and outside are also problematized. There is no place outside of language from where meaning can be generated.

Unlike Saussure, who just looked at structure as linear, Derrida insists that all structures have some sort of center. He's talking mostly about philosophical systems or structures, but the idea applies to almost any structure. There's something that all the elements in the structure refer to, connect to, something that makes the structure hold its shape, keeps all the parts together.

He talks about ethnology as an example of a decentering system. Ethnology (or anthropology) began as a way for Western European societies to proclaim themselves as the "centers" of civilization--to compare all other cultures to what Western Europe had accomplished. That's called "ethnocentrism" (to assume your culture is the measure or standard of all other cultures). But then ethnologists started seeing other cultures as autonomous, as existing on their own terms, and not necessarily in relation to Western European culture as the "center." They started to see relative value of each culture, not its relational value. This moment is the equivalent, in ethnology, to the "rupture" Derrida talks about in philosophy. 

Mostly Derrida uses this introduction of ethnology as a way to get to his main topic, which is Claude Levi-Strauss' structural view of the opposition between nature and culture. Levi-Strauss as a structuralist saw the basic structures of myth (and hence of all aspects of culture) as binary oppositions, pairs of ideas that gave each other value: light/dark (light has value or meaning because it's not darkness, and vice versa), male/female, culture/nature, etc. In looking at the nature/culture dichotomy, Levi-Strauss defines "natural" as that which is universal, and "cultural" as that which is dictated by the norms of a particular social organization. The rule of binary opposites is that they have to be opposites, so nature/culture, or universal/specific, have to always be absolutely separate. 

And here Levi-Strauss discovers what Derrida calls a "scandal"--an element of social organization that belongs to BOTH categories. The prohibition against incest is universal--every culture has one. But, it's also specific--every culture works out the laws of incest prohibition in its own way. So how can something be both universal and particular, both nature and culture? 

Derrida subverts the concept of hierarchy of binary opposition created by Levi- Strauss. He (Levi) creates hierarchy of nature/ culture and says that nature is superior to culture. For him, speech is natural and writing is culture. So Speech is superior to writing.

Similarly, Levi- Strauss has made the hierarchy between artist and critic. He claims artist is originator but critic comes later. Likewise artist uses first hand raw materials as engineer does but critics use second hand raw materials. In contrary to him Derrida argues that neither artists nor critic works on first hand materials, rather both of them use the materials that were already existed and used. In this sense, there is no hierarchy between them.

 In short, Derrida means to say that meaning is just like peeling the onion and never getting a kernel. Likewise, the binary opposition between literary and non-literary language is an illusion. But the prime objective of deconstruction is not to destroy the meaning of text but is to show how the text deconstructs itself. Derrida's idea of no-center, under erasure, indeterminacy, no final meaning, no binary opposition, no truth heavily influenced subsequent thinkers and their theories. These theories are: psychoanalysis, new historicism, cultural studies, post colonialism, feminism and so on.

These things are good, according to deconstructionists, because they deconstruct a structure. If the stability of a structure depends on these binary oppositions, if you shake those oppositions and make them unstable, you shake up the whole structure. Or, in Derrida's terms, you put the elements into "play." 

Once you deconstruct a system by pointing out its inconsistencies, by showing where there is play in the system, Derrida says you have two choices. One is that you can throw out the whole structure as no good. Usually then you try to build another structure with no inconsistencies, no play. But of course, according to Derrida, that's impossible--that's just like substituting one center for another and not seeing that the center (or transcendental signified) is just a concept, which has "play" like any other, and not a fixed and stable "truth."

This leads Derrida to his theory of the bricoleur inspired from Levi Strauss. He argues that it is very difficult to arrive at a conceptual position “outside of philosophy”, to not be absorbed to some extent into the very theory that one seeks to critique. He therefore insists on Strauss’s idea of a bricolage. It is thereby important to use these ‘tools at hand’ through intricate mechanisms and networks of subversion. For instance, although Strauss discovered the scandal, he continued to use sometimes the binary opposition of nature and culture as a methodological tool and to preserve as an instrument that those truth value he criticizes. Strauss discusses bricolage not only as an intellectual exercise, but also as “mythopoetical activity”. He attempts to work out a structured study of myths, but realizes this is not a possibility, and instead creates what he calls his own myth of the mythologies, a ‘third order code’. Derrida points out how his ‘reference myth’ of the Bororo myth, does not hold in terms of its functionality as a reference, as this choice becomes arbitrary and also instead of being dependent on typical character, it derives from irregularity and hence concludes, “that violence which consists in centering a language which is describing an acentric structure must be avoided”.

Thus, the bricolage is to keep using the structure, but to recognize it's flawed. In Derrida's terms, this means to stop attributing "truth value" to a structure or system, but rather to see that system as a system, as a construct, as something built around a central idea that holds the whole thing in place, even though that central idea (like the idea of binary opposites) is flawed or even an illusion. 

The person that does it a "bricoleur." This is somebody who doesn't care about the purity or stability of the system s/he uses, but rather uses what's there to get a particular job done. In philosophical terms, I might want to talk about a belief system, so I refer to God because it's a useful illustration of something that a lot of people believe in; I don't assume that "god" refers to an actual being, or even to a coherent system of beliefs that situate "god" at the center and that then provide a stable code of interpretation or behavior. 

I think about my playroom at home. My kids have lots of toys. But at the end of the day, the playroom is a wreck. This is bricolage. They make use of whatever is at hand to do or make whatever it is that catches their attention at the moment. That is bricolage, and the kids are bricoleurs. 

Bricolage doesn't worry about the coherence of the words or ideas it uses. For example, you are a bricoleur if you talk about penis envy or the oedipus complex and you don't know anything about psychoanalysis; you use the terms without having to acknowledge that the whole system of thought that produced these terms and ideas, i.e. Freudian psychoanalysis, is valid and "true." In fact, you don't care if psychoanalysis is true or not (since at heart you don't really believe in "truth" as an absolute, but only as something that emerges from a coherent system as a kind of illusion) as long as the terms and ideas are useful to you. 

Derrida contrasts the bricoleur with the engineer. The engineer designs buildings which have to be stable and have little or no play; the engineer has to create stable systems or nothing at all. He talks about the engineer as the person who sees himself as the center of his own discourse, the origin of his own language. This guy thinks s/he speaks language, s/he originates language, from her/his own unique existence. The liberal humanist is usually an engineer in this respect. I'm the engineer when I try to clean up my playroom every evening and try to get all the tinkertoy parts back into the tinkertoy box, all the legos in the lego box, etc.Bricolage is mythopoetic, not rational; it's more like play than like system. 

The idea of bricolage produces a new way to talk about, and think about, systems without falling into trap of building a new system out of the ruins of an old one (88b). It provides a way to think without establishing a new center, a subject, a privileged reference, an origin. It also inspires creativity and originality, making possible new ways of putting elements together. 

Derrida reads Levi-Strauss' discussion of myth in The Raw and the Cooked as a kind of bricolage.

Play is Derrida’s way of simultaneously recognizing the infinite range of deconstruction is possible not because there is an infinite range of information but because the inherent quality of all information is to be lacking and for there to be no suitable material (information) with which to fill that lack. This leads to the notion of the supplementary: “The overabundance of the signifier, its supplementary character, is thus the result of a finitude, that is to say, the result of a lack which must be supplemented” (207). Because positive, concrete definition is impossible for any term, every term necessarily requires a supplement or supplements, something or some things which help(s) it exist and be understood. Yet, at the same time, the object(s) which the supplement is (are) supplementing is (are) (a) supplements itself. Extend this web in all directions and the relationship between bricolage, play, and the supplementary begins to make sense.

How does Derrida define 'Transcendental Signified', 'Totalization', 'Play and Presence' in his essay “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences?''

Structuralism made it possible to see philosophical systems as all insisting on a center. The assumption that the center (God, rationality) is the basis or origin for all things in the system makes the center irreplaceable and special, and gives the center what Derrida calls "central presence" or "full presence," i.e. something never defined in relation to other things, by negative value.

Then he names the idea of a center as a "transcendental signified"--in semiotic terms, the ultimate source of meaning, which cannot be represented (or substituted) by any adequate signifier. Again, the idea of God is probably the best example of a transcendental signified. God can't be represented by any signifier, yet God is the thing that all signifiers in a system ultimately refer to (because God created the whole system). 

Then Derrida starts to wonder about how we can think and talk about systems and centers, without making a new system with a center. He mentions here Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger as all trying to do this, and failing to some extent because they all posited their own new systems (with centers). 

His example is to think about the concept of "sign"--as soon as you try to say that all signs are equal, that there is no transcendental signified that holds any semiotic system together, that signifying systems have no centers, and that therefore all signs have infinite play, or infinite ranges of meaning, you have to say that the only way you can even talk about signs is by using the word "sign", and assuming it has some fixed meaning. And then you're back in the system you're trying to "deconstruct." 

Derrida starts talking about the idea of "totalization". Totalization is desire to have a system, a theory, a philosophy, that explains EVERYTHING. The Puritans thought they had totalizing system--God is at the center, is the source and origin of everything, and reference to God explains everything that happens. Derrida says that totalization is impossible: no philosophy or system explains absolutely everything.

 “Totalization is…. at one time as useless, at another time as impossible”. 

There are two ways in which totalization is impossible: there might be too much to say, too many things to account for; or (Derrida's explanation) there might be too much play in the system--elements can't be fixed and measured and accounted for. Think again about the kindergarten class. Totalization would be taking attendance; you can't do it if there are a million kids, even if they're all sitting at their desks. You also can't do it if there are 14 kids all running around all over the place. 

It is finite language which excludes totalization as language is made up of infinite signifier and signified functioning inter-changeably and arbitrarily, thereby opening up possibilities for infinite play and substitution. The field of language is limiting, however, there cannot be a finite discourse limiting that field.

The center, while it holds the whole structure together, limits the movement of the elements in the structure--this movement is what Derrida calls "play." Think again of a building. A central shaft may hold all the wings and floors of a building together, limiting how much the structure as a whole, and any single element, can move--say, in a tornado or hurricane. In a building, this lack of "play" is good. In a philosophical or signifying system, Derrida says, it's not so good. 

When a system lacks a center, play becomes infinite; when a system has a center, play is limited or eliminated. All systems fall on a continuum between the two.

Stability--fixity caused by center--is what Derrida calls "presence." Something is fully present when it's stable and fixed, not provisional and mobile. Play is the disruption of presence. 

There can be two attitudes toward the idea of play as disruption of system/structure: nostalgia and disapproval or approval. You can be nostalgic for fixed systems, and long for a return to simple beliefs (say, in God), and can mourn the loss of fixity of meaning. Or you can play along, rejoice in multiplicity and affirm the provisional nature of all meaning. This latter attitude doesn't look for full presence, which would be rest and stability, but revels in flux, in impermanence, in play. Think of the kindergarten teacher who either weeps in frustration because her kids won't behave or who gets down on the floor and starts playing with them. Obviously, Derrida thinks enjoying play is better (and there are political ideas attached to this; they will come up later on).

Why does Derrida say that the center is not the center in his essay “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences?''

Jacques Derrida first read his paper “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences (1966)” at the John Hopkins International Colloquium on “The Language of Criticism and the Sciences of Man” in October 1966 articulating for the first time a post structuralist theoretical paradigm. Derrida starts this essay by putting into question the basic metaphysical assumptions of Western philosophy since Plato which has always principally positioned itself with a fixed immutable centre, a static presence. The notion of structure, even in structuralist theory has always presupposed a centre of meaning of sorts. Derrida terms this desire for a centre as “logocentrism” in his seminal work “Of Grammatology (1966)”. ‘Logos’, is a Greek word for ‘word’ which carries the greatest possible concentration of presence. As Terry Eagleton explains in “Literary Theory: An Introduction (1996)”, “Western Philosophy…. has also been in a broader sense, ‘logocentric’, committed to a belief in some ultimate ‘word’, presence, essence, truth or reality which will act as the foundation for all our thought, language and experience.

Derrida then introduces the idea that some "event" has occurred. This "event" is some sort of "rupture" or break.  What he's talking about is what he sees as a major shift or break in the fundamental structure of western philosophy (the episteme). This break is a moment where the whole way philosophy thought about itself shifted. That shift, or rupture, was when it became possible to think about "the structurality of structure." In other words, this is the moment when structuralism pointed out that language was indeed a structure, when it became possible to think (abstractly) about the idea of structure itself, and how every system--whether language, or philosophy itself--had a structure. 

As Peter Barry argues in “Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural (1995)” that in the twentieth century, through a complex process of various historico-political events, scientific and technological shifts, “these centers were destroyed or eroded”. For instance, the First World War destroyed the illusion of steady material progress; the Holocaust destroyed the notion of Europe as the source and centre of human civilization. Scientific discoveries – such as the way the notion of relativity destroyed the ideas of time and space as fixed and central absolutes. Then there were intellectual and artistic movements like modernism in the arts which in the first thirty years of the century rejected such central absolutes as harmony in music, chronological sequence in narrative, and the representation of the visual world in art. This ‘decentering’ of  structure, of the ‘transcendental signified’ and of the sovereign subject, Derrida suggests – naming his sources of inspiration – can be found in the Nietzchean critique of metaphysics, and especially of the concepts of Being and Truth, in the Freudian critique of self-presence, as he says, “a critique of consciousness, of the subject, of self-identity, and of the self-proximity or self-possession”, and more radically in the Heideggerean destruction of metaphysics, “of the determination of Being as Presence”.

A less concrete example of a system with a center would be a philosophical or belief system--say, the Puritan mindset. In the Puritan system of belief, GOD was the center of everything--anything that happened in the world (i.e. any event, or "unit", of the system) could be referred back to God as the central cause of that event. And nothing in the system was the equivalent of God--nothing could replace God at the center as the cause of all things. Refer this back to Saussure's idea that value comes from difference; that idea is based on the exchangeability between units (verbs are not nouns, but both are words, and could be exchanged for each other). The center of a system is something that has no equivalent value, nothing can replace it or be exchanged for it, it's the cause and ultimate referent for everything in the system. 

Because of this, Derrida says, the center is a weird part of a system or structure--it's part of the structure, but not part of it, because it is the governing element; as he puts it (84) the center is the part of the structure which "escapes structurality." In the Puritan example, God creates the world and rules it, and is responsible for it, but isn't part of it. 

The center is thus, paradoxically, both within the structure and outside it. The center is the center but not part of what Derrida calls "the totality," i.e. the structure. So the center is not the center. The concept of the centered structure, according to Derrida, is "contradictorily coherent."

Thus it has always been thought that the center, which is by definition unique, constituted that very thing within a structure which governs the structure, while escaping structurality. This is why classical thought concerning structure could say that the center is, paradoxically, within the structure and outside it. The center is at the center of the totality, and yet, since the center does not belong to the totality (is not part of the totality), the totality has its center elsewhere. The center is not the center.

Derrida argues that this centre thereby limits the “free play that it makes possible”, as it stands outside it, is axiomatic – “the Centre is not really the centre”. Under a centered structure, free play is based on a fundamental ground of the immobility and indisputability of the centre, on what Derrida refers to “as the metaphysics of presence”.

Derrida argues that all these attempts at ‘decentering’ were however, “trapped in a sort of circle”.Structuralism, which in his day was taken as a profound questioning of traditional Western thought, is taken by Derrida to be in support of just those ways of thought. Semiotics and Phenomenology are similarly compromised. Semiotics stresses the fundamental connection of language to speech in a way that it undermines its insistence on the inherently arbitrary nature of sign. Phenomenology rejects metaphysical truths in the favor of phenomena and appearance, only to insist for truth to be discovered in human consciousness and lived experience. It is important to note that Derrida does not assert the possibility of thinking outside such terms; any attempt to undo a particular concept is likely to become caught up in the terms which the concept depends on. For instance: if we try to undo the centering concept of ‘consciousness’ by asserting the disruptive counterforce of the ‘unconscious’, we are in danger of introducing a new center. All we can do is refuse to allow either pole in a system to become the center and guarantor of presence.

Derrida concludes this seminal work which is often regarded as the post-structuralist manifesto with the hope that we proceed towards an “interpretation of interpretation” where one “is no longer turned towards the origin, affirms freeplay and tries to pass beyond man and humanism”. He says that we need to borrow Nietzsche’s idea of affirmation to stop seeing play as limiting and negative. Nietzsche pronouncement “God is dead” need not be read as a destruction of a cohesive structure, but can be seen as a chance that opens up a possibility of diverse plurality and multiplicity.